Junko Mori facts for kids
Junko Mori (森 順子, Mori Junko) (born 1974) is a talented Japanese artist who lives in Wales. She mostly creates metal sculptures. Her artworks often connect to things she sees in nature, especially plants. She uses many different metals, from silver to mild steel. Her sculptures can be small enough for a table or very large. Junko Mori is known for her unique style that mixes different ideas. She combines her training in metalwork and sculpture from both Japan and the UK. People say she is "one of the most innovative and exciting Japanese metal artists working today." Her art has been shown all over the world. You can find her work in famous places like the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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Junko Mori's Early Life and Training
Junko Mori was born in 1974 in Yokohama, Japan. Her mother was a school nurse, and her father was an engineer who designed video recorders. Junko says both her parents' jobs influenced her. Her mother's interest in nature made her love botany, which is the study of plants. She also often helped her father fix things around the house. Junko remembers always wanting to make things. She looked for tools and art supplies. When she was eight, she even asked Santa Claus for a jigsaw!
Junko says she was not very interested in regular school subjects. But her love for art and making things continued through high school. This led her to the Musashino Art University in Tokyo. In 1997, she earned her degree in Industrial, Interior, and Craft Design/Metalwork. After this, she felt her art didn't quite fit into either the "fine arts" or "industrial arts" groups in Japan. So, she took a break from studying and spent a year learning about welding.
Later, one of her old professors introduced her to a silversmith. This silversmith had studied at Camberwell College of Arts in London. Even though Junko didn't speak English then, she was very interested in their metalworking course. She found the way art was taught in Britain to be very different from Japan. She felt it helped her focus more on the process of creating art. She earned another degree in Silversmithing and Metalworking from Camberwell in 2000. After that, she worked as an artist-in-residence at Liverpool Hope University for two years. In 2005, she was one of eight metalworkers chosen for the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize.
How Junko Mori Creates Her Art
Junko Mori makes amazing sculptures from steel or silver that she shapes by hand. When she was at Musashino University, she first found metal to be the hardest material to work with. But this challenge also made her want to work with metal more and more. All her hard work over the years has led to lively pieces. They show how flexible metal can be. Her sculptures often look as if they are alive, just like the plants that inspire them.
Junko says she usually doesn't plan each sculpture in detail before she starts. Instead, her ideas take shape as she works. However, she does make drawings and sketches. These drawings help her creative process. But they almost never look exactly like her finished sculptures. On her website, there's a "Research" page with many of these drawings. They range from simple plant drawings to colorful pictures of plants with dream-like elements. Junko compares drawing to "jogging" before a big run. Drawing helps her mind get ready and puts her in the right mood to start her 3D sculptures.
Once she begins working with metal, Junko says the repeated actions can make her lose track of time. She feels her mind goes a bit blank. Eventually, she says, "the artwork tells her when it is finished." At some point, she steps back, looks at the piece, and knows it's complete.
Junko Mori explains on her website, "I am always drawn to visual impact of an aggregate assembled with many small components." She adds, "I find infinite possibilities of the form multiplied by the vital power beyond the physical space, such as cell division through a microscope." This means she loves how many small parts can come together to make a big, powerful shape. Her sculptures are made of many similar small pieces. But because of the way she works with metal, each tiny part is slightly different. This makes the whole sculpture even more complex than it first seems. Junko calls these small differences "repeating little accidents, like the mutation of cells." She believes that the final collection of units grows "within the process of evolution." She says, "The uncontrollable beauty is the core of my concept."
Where to See Junko Mori's Art
Junko Mori's artwork is part of many public collections around the world. You can find her sculptures in these museums:
- The British Museum
- The Honolulu Museum of Art
- The Victoria and Albert Museum
- The Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide
- Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
- Manchester Art Gallery
- Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
- The National Museum Cardiff
- The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh
- National Museums Liverpool
- The Ulster Museum
Junko Mori's Personal Life
Junko Mori met her husband, who is a woodworker, at an art event in Manchester. Her first art studio was also in Manchester. But later, the couple needed more space for their studios. Junko used to visit Wales for surfing and bodyboarding. She loved the country because it had access to the sea, beaches, and mountains. These things, along with affordable homes, made them decide to buy a house there. Junko's current metalworking studio used to be a pig shed! Her husband's woodworking studio was once an old horse shed. They have two children.
Awards and Recognitions
Junko Mori has received several awards and honors for her work:
- 2001 - NEXT MOVE, Artist Residency at Liverpool Hope University
- 2002 - Gold Medal, Bavarian State Award at TALANTE, Munich, Germany
- 2003 - Crafts Council Business Development Award
- 2005 - Shortlisted for the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize: Metal
- 2009 - Second Prize, Schoonhoven Silver Award, The Netherlands
- 2019 - Finalist, Loewe Craft Prize, London
Selected Exhibitions
Junko Mori's art has been shown in many exhibitions.
Solo Exhibitions
These are shows where only Junko Mori's art was displayed:
- 2005 - Junko Mori, 21st Century Showcase, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
- 2006 - Junko Mori, Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool
- 2013 - Junko Mori: Coppiced Wood, The Holburne Museum, Bath
- 2018 - Collect: Visiting Nature Junko Mori Metalwork, JamFactory, Adelaide, Australia
Group Exhibitions
These are shows where her art was displayed alongside other artists' work:
- 2005 - Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2005: Metal, Crafts Council, London & UK tour
- 2009 - Can Art Save Us? Museums Sheffield; Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
- 2014 - Out of Sight: Drawing in the Lives of Makers, Contemporary Applied Arts, London
- 2017 - The International Hokuriku Kogei Summit – Worlds Kogei, Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, Toyama, Japan
- 2022 - Japanese Contemporary Design, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
